December 01, 2010

Three weird images from "Fantasia"

WTF, did Henry Darger do uncredited character animation on this sequence?...

Wait, when'd this turn into Heavy Metal? Or heavy metal?

While I have the same issues every other film monk has with the current version—overdubbed Deems Taylor, self-censored racism, etc.—I really am enjoying the hell out of the new Blu-ray of this. BLASTED the 7.1 sound the other day and it felt good.

The bare-breasted centaurettes in the Pastorale may be nippleless, but the Bald Mountain harpies who fly at the screen are definitely nippled - in full day-glo color, to boot. (Let's be grateful they didn't add digital halters to any of them.)

Replying to MovieMan, Deems' original audio is on both the VHS and Laser Disc releases of the movie. (And I'm holding onto my LD version for exactly that reason.) I wonder why they didn't just digitally reprocess Deems to bring his sound quality close enough to the rest of the restoration.

History repeats itself: I bought the Fantasia LD back then BEFORE I acquired a LD machine because I knew I'd make that purchase just down the road - and I just did the same thing with the new blu-ray release.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just watched the new version and the soundtrack clearly isn't the original Stokowski, right? And the digital cleanup -- to my eyes -- looks like every vestige of the original handpainted images has been eliminated and rejiggered to look like they originated in the digital domain.

Joe Strike - they dropped Taylor's voice because when they cut the film in 1941, a lot of his sequences were shortened. The audio for those cut sections has been lost, so instead of cutting in a replacement voice for the missing scenes, they dubbed the whole thing.

Steve Simels - It's the Stokowski version, cleaned up considerably. I need to run it through the big rig at home to see if it's been de-noised to death. Need to see it at home to judge picture as well.

You're right - Deem's (or 'Deem''s) introductions go on forever in the restored version of the movie compared to the previous version; I didn't know that original audio material had been lost. Thanks for enlightening me.